Hallucinating Spring

Or: Is that a Fenway Frank I Smell?



(I will now stick my entire body in the dryer)

I have tried to be calm. I have tried to grit my teeth and endure stoically. I have tried not to complain. But I can't take it anymore. I'm writing a strongly worded letter to Mother Nature and calling for a cease and desist on this bullshit.

Dear Mother Nature:

Listen, you uppity bitch, knock this shit off. A little snow is one thing - hell, even a foot or so is fine, we're hearty, we can take it - but goddamn woman, this is flippin' ridiculous. We can take the three feet of snow OR the hurricane force winds. Not both. No, no, you're not listening to me. Human beings were not meant to withstand this. You're taking our New England blood for granted. And it's not just people that are having problems. My car - a Subaru Forester, mind you, the very same car that is often depicted blowing through snow drifts like Darryl Strawberry through cocaine - literally screeches at me in protest when I coax her to life every morning. Screeches, I tell you! I mean, people stare.

I just spent ten minutes shoveling my driveway and I'm pretty sure I heard the wind mocking me. Or at least I assume I would have had my ears not frozen, fallen off my head and shattered on the ground.

You have dashed any hopes I've ever entertained of dressing cutely as you've made it necessary for me to swath myself in a gigantic, puffy, red coat that makes me expand to twice my normal size and gives the distinct impression of a sunburned Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. I lost my toes sometime on Tuesday and I've already taken one spectacular header thanks to your black ice. I sense more in my future.

I have permanent hat head thanks to the Patriots cap currently cemented to my skull and I mean to tell you that I am not at all fond of the ice planet Hoth you've turned my city into. The ocean? Frozen. FROZEN! Surely that is not normal.

Whatever point you're trying to make - that we're all whiny pussies, that you're pissed about global warming, that Father Time just broke up with you and you're hurt and you want everyone else to suffer - whatever it is, consider your point made. For real. Uncle. I give up.

Days like today with temperatures hovering in the tens make me question why on earth I continue to live here. I mean, I know there's a reason. It's just hard to remember what it is when you're forced to sleep under, UNDER, your feather bed to stave off hypothermia.

Currently, I have the 2004 World Series DVD playing in the background as I write this. Game 7 of the ALCS which means mid-October but damn if it doesn't look downright tropical right now. I would settle for a nice, temperate 50 degrees. I'm not picky but I would prefer my chills come from watching Jason Varitek embrace Tim Wakefield and say, "I'm so proud of you, man," then from the drafty-ass windows my landlord has seen fit to install.

I like snow when it serves to make Peyton Manning look like a third-string Pop Warner player against a swarming Patriots defense but the Pats aren't even playing this week. And when they do take the field again, it'll be in Florida. Even our own resident Nanooks of the North are done playing on Ice Station Zebra. And I'm still here. I've half a mind to get my frozen ass down to Gillette where the Pats are practicing inside, attach myself to Mike Vrabel's leg like a mollusk and refuse to let go until we land in Jacksonville.

By the way, on the DVD, Denis Leary is currently recapping Game 1 of the World Series. A game I missed everything but the last three pitches of because I was attending the wedding of a high school friend. In between updates from the bartender who was listening to WEEI on a contraband radio and sneaky phone calls to my Dad for an inning by inning play by play, I distinctly remember standing outside on the balcony, breathing in second-hand smoke and discussing the ALCS with the bride's uncle - a Yankees fan - while I gestured dramatically with what had to be my sixth gin and tonic. And I was shivering as satin dresses and strappy heels are not meant to ward off October chills. Do you have any idea what I would give for that kind of chill right now? That kind is sure as hell preferable to the kind I endured tonight when my legs literally turned into thigh-sicles and I put my faith in the fact that they would remember how to function on their own because my brain was too frozen to relay basic motor skills information.

I sent out a company-wide email yesterday asking who wanted tickets for the yearly company Red Sox game. Within three minutes - THREE MINUTES! - thirty people had responded. These are busy people, woman, busy people who are thinking about any number of things besides baseball but that one suggestion of spring, of warm breezes and Fenway smells and a night game on a Friday evening in May made all these important people drop what they were doing and respond with a resounding, "Yes! Sign me up!" Because warm thoughts are hard to come by these days.

I'm all for our hearty New England souls and our "we can take it" badge of honor represented by surviving this weather but right now I am sorely longing for warm, overpriced beer in a plastic cup and peanut shells crunching under my feet.

I mean, it snowed three feet on Sunday, literally trapping me in my house as they'd closed the roads to passenger traffic and leaving me with no choice but to pace back and forth in my tiny living room during the Pats/Steelers AFC Championship Game. Maybe you don't understand how this works. When there is an important or potentially stressful game on - and let's face it, what game isn't stressful for me? - I need an escape route. I need to be able to walk around the block to clear my head and scare the shit out of my neighbors by attempting to see the score on TV through their windows. I need to be able to hop in my car, switch off the radio, drive around aimlessly and call Heather and demand to know what's going on. I cannot do these things when I am trapped in my house by order of the State of Massachusetts as mandated by your pissed off mood swings. Are you trying to drive me completely, stark-raving, mental patient, batshit crazy? 'Cause it's working. And then, THEN, just when I'm starting to adjust to the twelve-foot snow bankings and I've promised my car a remote starter with my next paycheck, you dump another six inches of snow on me. Is that your idea of a sick fucking joke?

I mean it, woman. Chill. And by "chill," I mean, "warm the hell up." This isn't funny anymore. You do realize that spring training starts in three weeks, yes? Pitchers and catchers report? Because right now, Opening Day seems very, very far away.

On my TV, Foulke just tossed the one-hopper back to Minky and the Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in 86 years. Perhaps it's possible that Hell has literally frozen over. Millar is hugging Varitek and Wakefield is crying. Now those are chills. I guess I remember why I live here after all.

Beat that, woman.

Sincerely,

~Kristen